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Tag Archive: RSS feed

Make it easy for your readers to take action

Written on Thursday 25 August 2011 by Alice

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The whole point of a blog is that it enables your readers to interact with you. That is the beauty of Web2.0, and sets it apart from static websites that just sit there looking pretty (if you’re lucky) and boring (if you’re complacent).

So to make the experience of visiting your blog exciting for your readers, there are loads of apps and widgets at your disposal to upload and activate, which will keep your visitors really busy!

I don’t expect you to put everything available into your blog, or it will look like a dog’s breakfast and nobody will be able to choose what to do next, and will probably result in them running away! But there are some elements that should be present if you are to maintain the interaction a blog deserves.

One is to encourage some sort of subscription service. There are so many ways of doing this, varying from sophisticated sign up boxes to buttons you press after making a comment. For me it is important to make it very obvious to the reader that you want them to subscribe, and to stage it so they literally fall over the methods for doing so. I have often landed on a really good blog that has interested me, and wanted to keep in touch with the latest posts, only to hunt drastically around the site to look for a method of subscription, even to sign up to a RSS feed.

Of course RSS feeds always don’t fulfill my needs. I hate it when it merely leads to bookmarking the blog from my browser bar – I can’t be bothered to check that every day for new posts. What I am looking for is something that sends the newly-published posts to my in-box or to a reader in my search engine provider. This can be accomplished by creating a RSS URL through Feedburner (or equivalent), or using the various plugins or widgets available from WordPress. Read about one of them here: Don’t leave your WP greet box plugin undone.

Sharing is almost a requisite for blogs, as it has become commonplace to retweet a good post on Twitter or to share it on one of the many social bookmarking sites. This should definitely be encouraged, especially if you want to increase the traffic to your blog or expose it to a larger audience. There are lots of apps available to enable sharing, from individual transactions to collective mechanisms that allow the reader a choice in wherever he wants to promote your post. Even WordPress.com have a simple version: read Sharing is easy on WordPress.com to learn more.

These are just two interactive activities you could place on your blog, and there are many more to choose from which can enhance your blog’s performance and increase its interest factor. Just examine the widgets available for WordPress.com, and check out the myriad of plugins available for WordPress.org, and do a bit of experimenting. If you don’t know what to expect, take a look at other blogs you admire to find out what they have to offer, and then see if you can find a way of emulating the same functions that take your fancy or stimulate you to take action!

Magic Moment: Main settings update

Written on Thursday 18 August 2011 by Alice

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The settings on a blog are usually ignored because either they have been forgotten, or the blogger doesn’t understand what and how important they are.

I always make a bee-line to change the settings as soon as I have created a blog. You don’t need to act with such urgency, but it is important not to neglect this aspect of a blog if you want to optimise the search engine response and regulate how your blog relates to its community.

This is the main settings page:

I have already made my changes from the default settings provided. They are, of course, what I would like and fit in with my perception of how I want my blog to work, and should not be set in stone as ‘the’ settings to have. You should be free to ‘play’ with your settings to see what works best for you.

Magic Moment #7 would like to show you what my settings are – purely as a guide:

The Site Title will show up on the very top of your internet browser you see this blog in. (In PCs it goes from the left, on Macs it is centered.) It is the most prominent title in the search engine listings of your blog, so is very important in SEO terms. It should consist of your blog’s title, if you have one.

The Tagline is your blog’s strapline, or a brief description of what your blog is about, or who you are or what your business is about. Don’t make it too long, and preferably memorable. It is usually placed beneath your site title in search engines listings.

How important is it to set the correct location of your blog? Well, the default is UTC+0 which doesn’t take into account the blog’s country or light-saving-time-changes and such like. If you have set up a RSS feed into your social media, this will prevent your posts from being delayed before they arrive in your Twitter stream, for example.

I am very pernickety when it comes to presenting dates. The British write our dates differently from the Americans (a phenomenon which created problems when I was dating freshly prepared food in my San Francisco breakfast bar job) and I like my days to go before my months. Therefore I have used the setting ‘l j F Y’ to create my preferred format. You can find out which formats are available through the explanatory link available.

Setting the time presentation is purely cosmetic. I didn’t need to change anything here. I also didn’t amend the day my week started and which language I used. Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you’ve finished.

And there’s your gravatar to amend. Check out how to do this through this e-course ‘How to update personal profiles and upload gravatars’. Once done, your gravatar will represent you throughout the internet via your blog, so make sure it is large, clear and something you can live with without embarrassment!

Blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, SEO - Tags: blog, blog location, browser, dates, description, gravatars, listings, representation, RSS feed, save changes, search engine optimisation, settings, site title, tagline, times, Twitter - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

I’ve written a post – now what?

Written on Friday 8 April 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

Well done for writing a post – after all, that’s what your blog is for. Now you’ve got to let people know so they can see and read it. This can either be done manually or through automated systems.

Here is a list of what can be done to spread the exposure of your post:

Set up a RSS feed: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, which means automating a procedure for something to happen simultaneously in several places at once!

This means your subscribers will receive your latest post in their email inboxes, or view the latest feed in their search engine reader pages, immediately without you having to send it to them, or they remembering to visit your blog to find out your latest post.

Update your status: You can also use RSS to automatically feed your posts into Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and any other social media you’ve joined up with.

After you’ve published, your posts will automatically appear in your profiles via the special applications available, either with the headline, first paragraph and connecting link, or in Twitter as the headline accompanied with a tinyurl linking back to your post.

Allow readers to share: You can add applications to your blog to encourage people to share your post once they’ve read it, for example, there are the three boxes at the top of this post to encourage my readers to retweet in Twitter or share via Facebook and LinkedIn.

At the bottom of the post there is another button to encourage my more technical audience to share and save in any of the myriad of social bookmarking sites, which will boost the post’s exposure considerably.

Contribute your content: Sometimes it’s worth spending a bit of time manually promoting your post, especially if it’s performed with a personal touch, as that can set it apart from automated feeds. Start slowly with one or two locations, and build it up gradually.

If you’ve joined any relevant LinkedIn Groups, contribute to the discussion by posing a provactive question or statement, backed up with a link to your latest post, and do the same for LinkedIn Answers if you post qualifies and contributes to your answer.

Join in on other discussion groups and forums, either with helpful and relevant responses or by starting another thread with a link to your post. Comment on other blogs within your niche or industry, as that will automatically link back to your blog, as well as drawing attention to yourself, and some blogs will automatically show the last post you’ve written too.

Update your email signature: If you send out a lot of emails, you could be missing an excellent publicity slot if you don’t include your blog’s URL in your signature. You could even type in the latest post’s permalink for direct access.

That will do as a start. Automation will make your life easier, but don’t ignore manual contributions which can differentiate your post from others, and ensure its relevance to the environment it is posted into.

Reveal your passion when you post

Written on Tuesday 24 August 2010 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

There is one thing that will get your blog’s audience going, and that is your passion for your subject. They may be inspired by your writing, revel in your enthusiasm, absorb your knowledge and be in awe of your expertise, but it will be your passion that makes them come back for more!

It will be your passion that will make you write more posts, which means more new material, and thus more information to entice the search engine spiders to visit to index your posts. This in turn will therefore publicise your blog to a wider audience. Your great content will also encourage more readers to subscribe to your RSS feed, which in turn can be fed into social networking sites, exposing it even further through viral marketing and sharing tactics.

Your blog needs to have a subject you really enjoy writing about. It needs to be as wide as possible to stimulate you to undertake relevant research for your readers, to transform this information into something new, taken from your experiences and expertise. If you find a subject that has been blogged about many times before, don’t be put off; write about your point of view, how you see the situation, what slant you can put on it, what you can recommend or what item you have found that you wish to share. This makes the subject far more interesting to read, rather than purely writing blandly about a much quoted theme.

Eventually posting passionately should become a way of life. You will learn to find new content wherever you are, something will stimulate a possible post, or your brain will be inspired to think in another way to express your thoughts or observations. This then needs to be reverted it into something relevant that will interest your readers, providing them with a passionately inspired post written with them in mind, designed to entertain them suitably to encourage them to either comment or return for more.

blogs and blogging, Writing tips - Tags: blog posts, expertise, inspiring writing, more material, passion, RSS feed, search engine spiders, social networking sites, wider audience - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

5 top tips for a successful post

Written on Friday 14 May 2010 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

The Fairy Blog Mother is always open to questions about blogging, so when one client showed me a draft post she had compiled to go into her new blog (which I have been designing for her) to ask for my approval, I realised I could share them with you too. Here they are listed below:

1. Short and snappy: I know people do write long blog posts (I know, I’m guilty - there are plenty of examples in this blog) but a good rule is to keep your post to within 250 words (or if you can’t visualise that, about three good sized paragraphs will do) to maintain the reader’s attention. Since a blog is really a conversational medium, it’s not really suitable for long articles with deep intricate discussions, so these are better off posted in article directories.

2. Capture their attention: A good headline is vital on many fronts. It is usually the first point of call for your posts, so should be designed to draw the punters in, say exactly what’s on the tin, and can be enhanced by being stuffed full of keywords for Search Engine Optimisation purposes, especially as it also doubles as a link when used within a RSS feed.

3. Be up front: Explain exactly what the subject of your post is in the first paragraph, ideally within the first sentence. Research has shown that people usually only read the first 25% or spend an average of 96 seconds on a blog post before they decide whether it’s of interest or whether it’s worth reading – therefore don’t leave the most important or most interesting part until last, in case your readers never get there!

4. A quick read: Most people scan a blog post to get the gist and make a decision to read further. Sub-dividing your post into bullet points or subheadings to help towards maintaining short attention spans, facilitating skim reading habits, enabling subject recognition or just break up over-long text. Numbered posts like this one at good, as they aren’t difficult to write, and can very easily provide your reader the information they crave.

5. Command a response: Blogs thrive on reader interaction which in turn provides links, another vital element. Each comment’s link is a gateway for internet spiders, as well as new material (or spider food) for the search engines. Comments can be stimulated by controversial, confrontational or poignantly educational posts (like this one?), or you could pose a question or statement to invite a comment, just like the one below:

Can any of you think of more pointers to add to my list?

Widgets and more for WaltonPR

Written on Tuesday 6 April 2010 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

I do like the chance to review a blog from time to time, so that I can show what elements of a blog could be added to enhance it and improve it to make it more successful.

But ‘successful’ is so subjective. It’s important never to lose sight of the fact that people have different perceptions of what their blog should be, what’s it for, what they are trying to achieve, what they think looks nice. Does your blog have to look nice to guarantee it does incredibly well? Usually success is due to the personality and reputation of the author, plus the quality and consistency of the posts, how old the blog is (longevity certainly stimulates the search engine index criteria), the subject matter or niche, and how extensively the blog has been fed to the blogging directories and other social networks.

I look forward to reviewing other blogs (with the author’s permission) in the future, but today I shall use a brand new blog to highlight a few things that could be done to enhance it.

Both kinds of blog

First of all I would like to congratulate Emma on starting her blog. This is a fantastic step she’s taken, and her first post is extremely good. She’s avoided the boring ‘welcome to my blog’ post, and has launched into her news with great gusto! Long may it continue Emma, I look forward to the next one. (Incidently, by the time you read this post I sincerely hope she will have written many more!)

The theme’s colour matches her website, and I note that she has a pink flamingo for her logo: perhaps some more attention could be drawn it. The descriptive header has a quote explaining her profession and her logo links back to her website.

RSS from Feedburner

I note she hasn’t put many widgets in her sidebar. One of the most important elements to include would be a RSS feed. Subscribe to Feedburner to create a RSS URL, and obtain a chicklit (the litttle orange square so commonly recognised as RSS) to feed her blog to a search engine reader page, plus a sign-up form to collect readers’ email addresses so they can receive her new posts in their in-boxes.

social media links

Emma, why not encourage your readers to connect with you on social networking sites? Use the relevant badges and buttons that are available, or alternatively use images of each social media and link them to your relevant profile page. You could also use a widget to show your latest Twitter feeds, obtainable from the ‘Goodies’ link right at the bottom of your Twitter profile, which can be customised accordingly.

Widgets used so far on her sidebar

If you’re new to blogging, think carefully about your categories, or topics, that subdivide your blog’s niche or subject into manageable chunks. These are used for archiving or finding posts within a particular area, and also help the search engines to search for new content. Once created they will be listed in the categories widget, and remember to allocate your posts to them before you publish. I also note you’ve included a tag (keywords) cloud widget; when you post more you’ll see the most frequently used tags increase in size to show their importance.

share your post on social media

Add to your recent posts widget one for the most popular posts, and one to show the comments your readers leave you. Text widgets are suitable for pictures, icons linking to elsewhere, to contain code for special effects or badges, list testimonials or quotes, and anything else you’d like to share with your readers. Use a plug-in (blog application available from WordPress.org) to enable your readers to share your post on social media if they like what they read, excellent for wider exposure and to increase your audience.

And last, but not least, don’t forget to update your About page. People like reading about the author, and it gives you a chance to plug your business, add in testimonials, and paste in a nice picture of yourself. And there is no reason why you can’t add in more pages that could enhance your blog’s subject matter, or explain your business further. This blog has over 20 pages (so far) to present my free blogging resources, so the world could be your oyster!

If you would like to learn more about any of these suggestions, ask the fairy blog mother by clicking on her logo at the top!

blogs and blogging, social networking - Tags: blog's niche or subject, blogs and blogging, categories, elements of a blog, feedburner, personality and reputation of the author, quality and consistency of posts, RSS feed, social networking sites, successful, Twitter profile, widgets in her sidebar - 1 Comment - Why not leave a comment?

How is a blog post like a chocolate muffin?

Written on Monday 14 September 2009 by Alice

chocolate muffin

Let’s bake some muffins (the American ones that resemble large cup cakes) and compare the process to writing a blog post.

First, gather together the necessary equipment and ingredients. You will need a bowl, a saucepan, cooking scales, a bar of chocolate, flour, butter and sugar, an egg, vanilla essence and chocolate drops, muffin cases, a baking tray, an oven, some hungry people, and a recipe book.

mixing bowl

Your bowl represents your blog’s posting page. It’s empty, and needs the ingredients to be put in it to make your muffins. Likewise your edit post page needs some post material to be written into it.

cooking chocolate

The idea for your post is like deciding what flavour your muffins should be. It’s best to choose a subject that everybody will want to read, so we have chosen chocolate as this is usually a favourite. Melt your chocolate in a saucepan.

flour

Now weigh out your flour, or the words of your post. This is the bulk of the final product. But other ingredients need to be added, as flour alone won’t make a muffin.

butter

But before you add the flour to your bowl, you must cream together the butter and sugar. This mixture represents the headline or title of your post, as it needs to be done or thought of first. It can be hard work to create the correct consistency, but it will be worth it.

egg

sugar

Add a beaten egg to the mixture, or check that the headline has become a suitable permalink or URL for your post, and doesn’t read just as a page number. The permalink is important for search engine optimisation, to allow the mixture to rise during cooking, so it is a good idea to get it right.

vanilla essence

chocolate drops

Now you enhance the flavour of your muffin mixture with vanilla essence and chocolate drops (which represents the tags or keywords of your post). These will transform your muffins into tasty double chocolate samples rather than just ordinary chocolate ones.

Now you fold the flour into the mixture, or write the words with all the elements included above. Remember to add the melted chocolate (or retain the relevance of your post), or your muffins won’t turn out as expected.

muffin cases

Then spoon the mixture into your muffin cases, so they retain their shape and cook better on the baking tray. This is the equivalent of allocating your post to its category or topic page.

oven

Now you need to publish your post, or cook your muffins in the oven. Mmmm, wonderful chocolatety smells! Once the time is up, they should be ready to be devoured by hungry readers.

baker's shop

Oh, and I forgot to mention the baker’s shop. If you supply a baker’s shop to sell your muffins, more people who pass by or visit the shop will get a chance to buy and eat them. And if the shop provides a delivery service, regular customers will receive half a dozen as soon as they are baked. This is the equivalent of RSS feeding and subscribing your newly published posts.

And the last item is my recipe book, or Fairy Blog Mother blog, where you can learn more about blogs and how to create them.

blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs - Tags: blog posts, category or topic, chocolate muffins, choose a subject, headline or title, necessary equipment, publish, RSS feed, search engine optimisation, suitable permalink, tags or keywords, writing a blog post - 2 Comments - Why not leave a comment?